After Orange County Department of Education Superintendent Al Mijares retired for health reasons in April 2024, the board tapped Stefan Bean, the head of the Irvine International Academy, a charter school, as his replacement. Mijares died of cancer the next January.

Bean is running for a full term on the June 2 ballot and is unopposed. He has a Ph.D. from Cal State Fullerton and teaches at Cal State Dominguez Hills. His department oversees and supplements O.C.’s 28 local school districts. In 2022, he lost a challenge to Mijares, 55% to 45%.

Now in the role and set to continue, I interviewed Bean to get his thoughts on the job at hand.

With the economy strained from higher fuel prices from the Iran War, I asked Bean how he was dealing with rising costs for buses and other vehicles. “That means we need to be really prudent in other areas,” he said. “We take a look at areas that we can cut, to offset, to make sure that our kids can get fed.”

I checked his department’s Annual Comprehensive Financial Report for the fiscal year ended June 30, 2025. For the unrestricted net position, a key number, Mijares left behind a positive $228 million, which was excellent. Bean improved it to $259 million.

The Register has championed charter schools since the Legislature authorized them with the Charter Schools Act of 1992. These are alternative public schools providing parental choice, as well as needed competition for traditional schools.

“I really do believe charters play a role in providing options for families,” charter veteran Bean said. “My position at the same time is that accountability and transparency are central” for parents to make informed choices. Indeed, bad charters ought to be closed. 

One recent scandal involved North Valley Military Institute in Los Angeles, shuttered in 2023 due to “alleged misappropriation of funds, unqualified teachers and insufficient services for students with disabilities,” according to EdSource. But I would add, it’s a lot easier to close troubled charters than traditional schools.

Another concern is low statewide test results, despite spending $27,418 per pupil, per Gov. Gavin Newsom’s budget proposal for fiscal year 2026-27, up 60% from before he took office. At least that’s not as much a problem here compared to the state average.

“We’re proud in Orange County we outperform our contiguous counties in English Language Arts and math,” Bean said. 

On the California Assessment of Student Performance and Progress tests from last October, students in L.A. County scored 50.5% proficient in ELA and 39.3% in math. For Orange County, it was 59.9% proficient in ELA and 49.2% in math. That’s about 10 points higher in each. But room for improvement.

I’ve been fighting for 39 years in these pages to get rid of the “whole language gimmick,” which teaches reading by “sight” memory of words, instead of phonics, which teaches kids to learn letters and sound them out into syllables. Finally, last year the Legislature passed 

Assembly Bill 1454, which makes teaching phonics state policy, albeit calling it the Science of Reading in education jargon.

Bean embraced the Science of Reading as using “cognitive science, linguistics, education and basically how the brain learns to read.”

I also asked Bean about how he thinks about political indoctrination in our school system.

I brought up how a friend’s kindergartener came home from his OC public school and turned off all the lights in the house, insisting, “We have to save the polar bears!” My friend didn’t like how the school was indoctrinating his child in environmental politics.

“At the end of the day, I always tell people that I am an educator, not a politician,” Bean responded. “I can’t speak for teachers when they do those kinds of things. But I can tell you that we need to leave politics out of the classroom.”

I personally thought that was a weak answer, but Bean is working within a system where not a lot can be changed. The solution to these sorts of issues, Arizona-style universal school choice, including private schools, currently is impossible in this state because of the power of the teachers unions.

Until then, we can only hope voters elect capable leaders to oversee our education system. 

All considered, under Bean, parents in Orange County have a fair amount of choices and taxpayers don’t have to worry about the OCDE going belly up.

John Seiler is on the SCNG Editorial Board.